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Biluan mind
The Biluan Mind is a devouring swarm of humanoid beings linked by a psionic hivemind and is considered to be one of the greatest threats to galactic peace. It is believed by many Commonwealth scientists to be driven by the single-minded desire to integrate all available biomass into itself, and turn all the food in the galaxy into more Biluans, at which point when it has run out of other food sources, it will fall upon itself in a neverending bloodbath of cannibalism. Hivemind structure The Biluan Mind is made up of, according to the most recent estimates, upwards of a hundred billion individuals (though recent scouting operations and sensor probes carried out by Phalanx operatives suggest this may be an overestimate). These drones are connected to one another through a civilization-wide neural network made up of subspace links similar to those formed by psionically gifted individuals who have made a pilgrimage to the heart of the Crystal Pyramid. The Biluan Mind appears, at least on the battlefield, to operate through a decimal system of stacked control. Every ten drones, more or less, appear to be connected to a "decurion drone", passing basic sensory information up the chain to it via their species-wide psionic links, and receiving instructions in return. These decurions are in turn arranged into groups of ten, with each group connected in the same way to a "centurion". While it is theorized that this same structure of stratification continues up the line up to the very top, with one or a small number of individuals making all the grand strategic choices for the Mind's operations across the entire galaxy, The Commonwealth has yet to observe a "primus" drone (1000 subordinates) in the field, and there have never been enough captured Biluan to be able to form that scale of social structure in a controlled environment. In spite of the lack of definitive proof for the existence of these higher ranked drones, the theoretical ranks have official names in Commonwealth military databases, so as to avoid confusion or improper nomenclature over official channels in the case of such a drone being encountered in the field. All soldiers and spaceship crews entering combat against the Mind are made aware of this rank structure, and psionically gifted soldiers are trained before deployment in strategies that allow for exploitation of these networks to gain momentary advantages on the battlefield. Given enough time, they are able to detect paths of communication among nearby Biluan drones and use these patterns to identify decurions and centurions, which can then be marked as priority targets for snipers and air support, or simply killed by the psionic individual themselves. However, given the amount of information being passed around in any given swarm and the limited amount of time a psychic operative will usually have available to do this, in spite of some success at picking out decurion drones, no psionic operative has yet been able to positively identify a centurion in battlefield conditions, let alone theoretical higher rank drones such as primus (1000) or archon (10,000). When these connections are interrupted, for example through the destruction or incapacitation of a decurion drone, the drones under that being's command will be temporarily disconnected from the Mind and will usually revert to a "feral" state. However, if another drone of superior rank finds a feral drone, they will begin "overclocking" their psionic abilities to connect to the extra drones and reincorporate them into the Mind. This allows them to directly interface with several times as many drones as normal - some decurions in the field have been observed directly controlling at least 30 basic drones when the need arose - but it results in a reduction in command efficiency, an increase in signal lag both for passing instructions and receiving information, and a sharp uptick in the chance of the overclocked commander drone making a tactical mistake. So, while Commonwealth and allied field commanders know they can never count on permanently severing the drones they're fighting from the Mind, it's still generally accepted practice to reduce their fighting effectiveness by killing as many of their high ranking drones as possible. It's unknown how high ranking drones are chosen. It's possible that Biluan "queens" are simply able to produce some drones with the ability to command, or there may be some system of promotion among the drones where gaps in the command structure can be filled as needed. More research is necessary. History The Biluan Mind has waged a number of aggressive wars against its neighbors, including the Kingdom of Yadra, the Cizri Union, and, most recently, against the Udkavongo Sovereign Stars, during which it captured their homeworld. Category:Biluan